Wild’ child: Did Sean Penn just make his first hit (as a director)?

Tuesday

Sep 25, 2007 at 12:01 AMSep 25, 2007 at 8:32 AM

Penn was never content just to act in movies. He had set higher goals very early on.

Ed Symkus

Sean Penn: prickly actor, chain-smoking environmental activist, political progressive, no friend of the press. He first caught our attention a quarter-century ago as the stoned-out, laid-back high school clown Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

Eventually, due to wise role choices and phenomenal acting chops, Penn won over moviegoers and filmmakers with solid parts in “The Falcon and the Snowman,” “Dead Man Walking” and “Sweet and Lowdown,” and an Oscar for “Mystic River,” along with some dogs such as “Shanghai Surprise” and “We’re No Angels.”

But Penn was never content just to act in movies. He had set higher goals very early on. When his reputation as a serious student of cinema became big enough, he went on to write and direct “The Indian Runner” and “The Crossing Guard,” films that didn’t make much money, but earned him a whole new level of respect in Hollywood, where he was already seen as the heir to the De Niro throne.

His newest film, which he wrote, directed and produced, is an adaptation of “Into the Wild,” the based-on-fact book by Jon Krakauer. It tells the haunting tale of free-spirited Christopher McCandless, who dropped out of society to live off the land in Alaska, only to find that he wasn’t quite up to the power and grandeur of Mother Nature.

Penn had tried to get rights to make the movie for a decade, but the wealthy McCandless family wasn’t willing to let Hollywood get its hands on the story of their late son. Even Penn isn’t sure why they finally acquiesced, but he was long ready to get the project off the ground.

“I had read the book from cover to cover, once,” says Penn, “and it made such an impression on me that 10 years later, when I wrote the first draft, I did it without rereading the book.

“It went very fast,” he adds. “I had been writing it in my head, in hopes, for 10 years. So it was about three weeks for a first draft — pacing, smoking and dictating to my assistant.”

Penn did later reread the book, and added some polish to the script, but he maintains that the film is exactly the book he read all those years ago.

One of his most important early decisions was picking an actor to play McCandless, someone who could hold the film together even while playing most of his scenes alone, a small speck in a vast landscape. He went with Emile Hirsch, 22, who’s done dynamic dramatic roles in “Alpha Dog” and “Lords of Dogtown,” and played effective comedy in “The Girl Next Door.” He’ll soon be seen starring in “Speed Racer.”

“I wasn’t very familiar with actors of Emile’s age,” admits Penn. “Among the ones I was familiar with, nobody moved me or gave me great hope for the future. I wanted someone with talent. I wanted somebody that was on the cusp of boy-to-man; I wanted to watch it happen. And most of all I wanted somebody whose weight was their heart, because the heart shows through the head and eyes. And all of those things came together in Emile.”

With a script and a leading man in place, Penn then had to figure out how he would direct the complex project. He explains that his talent for that part of the job comes from his lifelong love for everything about movies.

“It started when I was in the audience,” he says. “I think I was as interested in sound and image as I was in writing and acting. I found my way in with what I fell in love with, which was acting. But for me, it was always being part of storytelling.”

Penn claims that, for him, the most intense part of the process is in the writing.

“That’s where I have to take it in, feel it and express the details and nuances of character,” he says. “But in terms of directing, I think the real job is finding a lot of elements that work together. That was always the thing I paid most attention to and cared most about, and care most about, even as an actor — to understand what my part is in the whole picture.”

Penn goes out of his way to give credit to his collaborators on “Into the Wild,” and he includes in that group everyone from actors to producers to crew. His favorite mantra seems to be that the movie was made by a lot of people.

He follows that with the statement that he wants to destroy a myth, the one about the director — any director — who has a particular touch with actors.

“I’ve always resented it when people ask how did you bring these performances out of this person or that person,” he says. “It doesn’t happen. Directors don’t get performances out of actors. Actors give great performances to directors. I’m just an organizer of a family, and everybody builds this thing. So when you have that behind you, you don’t look at it as something that’s hard to get done. You get your family together, and you will it to be done.”